


the earth laughs in flowers

by cloudsandpassingevents



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 07:32:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4171281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudsandpassingevents/pseuds/cloudsandpassingevents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosette has always loved weeds. </p>
<p>(Or, the life of one Euphrasie Fauchelevent, as told through the flowers she finds along the way.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the earth laughs in flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for brief descriptions of verbal and physical abuse, as well as canonical character death.

The earliest things she remembers are the daisies.

“Isn’t that pretty?” Mama asks–it must be Mama, because even if she barely remembers the sound of her voice she remembers the tenderness in it. Mama, with her small hands and long soft hair, holding the bottom of a dress in front of her. “See,” she says, and she points at the string of flowers she’s embroidering on it. “Daisies, for my Cosette.”

The centers are small and yellow, so bright that they look juicy. Cosette reaches out and touches them, pulls them towards her mouth and Mama laughs, gently tugs it away. “Silly Cosette,” she says, smiling, reaching out and tickling her under her chin, pulling Cosette onto her lap when she shrieks with laughter and tries to squirm away. “Little girls don’t eat daisies,” and she blows a raspberry against her neck, catching her hands and planting a kiss into each of them with a loud smack.

She’s wearing the dress the morning they leave their home. Mama hands her a different dress at first, but she won’t put it on. It’s itchy and too warm. She throws it onto the ground, pulls out the daisy dress instead. Mama relents. She puts a coat around Cosette instead, but the edge of the dress sticks out from underneath. If Cosette tugs the bottom of the coat up she can see the yellow centers sewn into the border.

Mama leads her out onto the road, but instead of turning towards the town, she takes a different road, one that Cosette has never been on before. She walks a little closer to Mama, looking back down at the bottom of her dress at the safe little row of flowers. Mama’s walking fast, so fast that she has to almost trot to keep up. The ground is muddy and she keeps tripping over the bottom of her skirt.

When she’s tired, Mama carries her. She falls asleep against her shoulder for a while; when she wakes up, the sun is setting and they’re getting closer to a town. Mama is singing a lullaby under her breath.

She should tell Mama that she’s awake, but Mama’s arms are warm and comfortable and her voice hums gently against Cosette’s chest. And before long, Cosette falls back asleep, lulled by the steady beat of Mama’s walking.

Two days later, when she’s finished playing with the other two girls, she looks up and Mama isn’t there anymore. She gets halfway down the road Mama went down before the woman catches up with her, grabs her arm and yanks her backward hard enough that it wrenches and she cries out.

“Where are you going, little brat?” the woman asks, giving her a shake. “Your mother’s not coming back, don’t you know that?” When Cosette doesn’t move, she shakes her again. “Are you deaf? Go on, get home with you. Get on! There’s work that needs doing.” She shoves her towards the inn.

Cosette stumbles back, tripping over a rock in the path. The woman glowers. “An idiot,” she grumbles, shaking her head. “We’ve let her pawn an imbecile off on us.” She raises her voice. “Go on! Or I’ll give you a reason to cry!”

That night, when she curls up in the corner, she fingers the bottom of her dress. It’s muddy and sooty, and when she tries to rub it off, it only works the dirt deeper into the fabric. She scrubs at her eyes; inching closer to the fire, she lifts up the edge, trying to see the pieces of dried mud that she can pick off. Her vision keeps blurring. The flames hiss and spit. Their edges blend into each other.

She’s woken up by a foot shaking her shoulder. “Get up,” the woman–Madame Thenardier, she thinks–scowls, giving her a shove once she’s sure Cosette’s awake. “It’s already morning, you lazy little beast. Get up. We’re not keeping you for free.” She shoves her again with her foot before Cosette can flinch away–not hard enough to be a kick, but hard enough that Cosette’s shoulder hits the ground with an audible crack. A sharp pain shoots down her arm. She squeezes her eyes shut until it fades away.

When she crawls to her feet, she’s stiff from sleeping on the cold ground. She follows after Madame Thenardier, rubbing her shoulder.

Later that day, when she’s sweeping the floor, she looks down at the bottom of her dress. It’s stained almost up to her ankles with mud, and the edges are dusty from dragging along the ground.

She can’t see the daisies anymore. This time, she doesn’t cry.

 

\---

 

When Papa finds her, he gives her new stockings and new dresses and a new doll. He’s tall, but his eyes are gentle on her, even as he talks to Madame.

“You will live with me from now on,” he tells her, and Cosette is not afraid. She can’t remember the last time she wasn’t afraid.

She comes out of her room wearing the new clothes, but when they leave, she’s carrying an old ragged dress with her. Papa looks at it, but doesn’t say anything, just holds out his hand. “Come along, Cosette,” he says, and she takes his hand as they walk down the road out of the town.

 

\---

 

She likes the convent.

She likes the lessons: history, spelling, art; she likes the teachers, who are strict but fair and treat everyone the same; she likes waking up early in the morning for prayer and the sound of the nuns’ robes in the corridors when they check the rooms at night and having a schedule that never changes, that she can depend on; she even likes scrubbing the floors of the chapel, because they shine when she’s finished and anyways, it’s not so bad when there are other people there with you.

She doesn’t see Papa much. She’s not supposed to see him at all, really, but sometimes at night she hears the bells tinkling in the garden. At first, she snuck to the window to look outside, but a sister nearly caught her one night and after that she had to stay in her bed. She still hears the bells, though. When she’s awake, she imagines Papa moving between the rows of flowers, checking their leaves and watering them carefully. Papa is always careful.

The best days are when they learn about plants. She reads books about roses and lilies and ivies and draws pictures of them in the margins of her papers. Sometimes her words grow vines curling around the edges, when she gets bored; other times tiny flowers sprout over the borders of the maps they use.

The plants she likes the best, though, aren’t in her books. She likes the weedy roquette and dandelions and the daisies that grow by the side of the church, in the back near the walls. Nobody takes care of them, but they grow anyways.

They’re supposed to pull out weeds in the garden when they see them, the mothers say. Cosette doesn’t always, though. And she likes seeing them peeking out from under the leaves of the bigger plants when she walks by. It’s like having her own little secret garden.

She hears something scratching outside her window one night. As she falls asleep, she’s not sure if she hears the faint sounds of bells in a dream or not.

The next morning, though, there’s a patch of daisies growing by her window. The nuns make a note to tell the gardeners about it, but somehow, neither of them ever get around to removing it.

 

\---

 

Later, when Cosette will look back, she will remember being happy.

She doesn’t know why they’re leaving the convent, but she trusts Papa. So she packs her trunk and follows him out of the walls into the crowded, noisy city. He leads her through winding streets to a small house on the outskirts that she’s never seen before and pulls an old key out of his pocket.

The house is small, but it’s comfortable, and when he opens a door to show her her room, it’s already furnished, a small desk and a bed already set up in the corner. She smiles when he asks her if she likes it, nods and thanks him quietly for everything he’s done for her, to make her happy.

He smiles then, slowly. “There’s one more thing,” he says as he leads her outside.

When the door opens, she gasps. The garden is overgrown and messy and chaotic, with bursts of flowers and leaves from the undergrowth and the canopy so thick that she can barely see the winding path. It seems like all the plants in the world are in flower, bursts of color exploding in her vision.

Papa nearly staggers back a step when she throws herself into his arms. “Thank you, thank you–”

“You’re happy with it, then?” he says, gently wrapping his arms around her.

“Oh, Papa, yes!” She squeezes him hard, getting up on her toes so she can kiss his cheek. “So much, thank you!”

He smiles then, soft and gentle. “Then I’m happy,” he says, and his arms are warm around her.

And it doesn’t matter that they left the convent or that the house is small and strange or that Papa smiles and quietly deflects all her questions about why they had to come here in the first place.

She looks around and thinks that she’s happy.

She has her garden and her flowers and her papa, and they are enough.

 

\---

 

The night she meets Marius, the first flowers of spring are just appearing. When she remembers it, years later, the memory comes with the faint smells of honeysuckle laced around the edges.

She falls in love in a garden blooming into life. The nights are warm and heavy with a thousand scents, and when she falls asleep, it’s to the memory of Marius’ voice and the color of the brightest flowers bursting behind her eyelids. As she falls asleep, she thinks about how lucky she is.

She has her books and her flowers and her papa and Marius, and she thinks that her heart might burst from happiness.

 

\---

 

The window of her room in M. Gillenormand’s home opens into the garden outside. She goes for walks when Marius is asleep, trying to get used to it. It’s clean and cultivated where hers was wild and overgrown, neat rows of flowers with all the weeds near their bases pulled out.

It’s different, but she thinks she likes it, especially when Papa comes to walk with her. He’s quieter now, but when they’re walking in the garden, she can draw those small smiles out of him, and it makes her happy, making sure that he’s happy.

She has a garden, one that’s different from before but still beautiful, she has Marius, and she has her papa, and they are all she’s ever needed.

 

\---

 

“Mama! Mama!”

“Alright, cherie, I’m coming,” she says, picking up her hat as she heads towards the door, where her daughter is waiting impatiently.

It’s been a long time since she’s been to the gardens. The last time was a month after Papa died, and she’d made it as far as the benches before she had to stop and go back home. And as much as she should be used to looking over her shoulder at old ghosts, sometimes she wonders if it’s ever been this hard to let go. If resilience is something that needs to be practiced; if she’s been too lucky with the people she loves for too long, and now she’s paying the price for it.

But she’s never been good at accepting things she didn’t like. So she’s trying, today.

Her daughter wants to see the Luxembourg. So they walk down the path, her daughter tugging at her hand. She points out the trees, the clouds, the flowers; tells her their names and where they’re from and what they’re for just like her father used to for her. Her daughter listens for a while, but soon she starts dragging her feet, looking over at the neat lawns by the path.

Cosette smiles a little. “Go on,” she tells her, and her daughter bounds off, running through the grass with her dress flying out behind her, laughing. Slower, Cosette follows behind her, keeping one eye on her as she flits around, bending over to look at the flowers and chasing the birds. The world is in bloom around them, trees and grasses and shrubs in full flower.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a flash of white and she kneels down, pushing the undergrowth back.

There are a few daisies, small weedy things, growing by the side of the path. Cosette kneels by them, listening to her daughter’s laughter echoing down the path. She fingers the leaves lightly. The petals are battered and ragged, but as soft against her hands as she remembers his hands were; she can imagine the slow curve of his smile in the yellow center.

Before straightening up, she brushes the petals with her hand again. She looks at the sky and thinks that she’s lucky.

She has her books, and her family.

She has her flowers, and so maybe she has her papa, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Hamatreya," by Ralph Waldo Emerson.


End file.
